On Monday night, Naiara Moreno became the winner of the new era of Triumph operation, on Amazon Prime Video. The 26-year-old from Zaragoza has convinced the audience after 12 weeks of musical competition by performing a song of great vocal demand and enormous popularity among the public, the I will Survive by Monica Naranjo. The contestant has emerged as a favorite almost since gala 0, when she covered I’m dying from The Fifth Station. The solidity with which she interpreted, sang and danced in one of her most recent performances on Let’s Get Loud by Jennifer Lopez underpinned her success in a contest in which the audience has also fallen in love with her mature, kind and empowered personality.
“I have shown myself one hundred percent. I couldn’t be more me, with all my facets. I am super proud of what I have built and what I have learned here. Teachers teach us to be better people every day. And you can’t buy that with money,” she commented after her first performance at the last gala of OT 2023.
There were no surprises when announcing the three finalists with the fewest votes: Martin came sixth (6% of the votes), Lucas was fifth (7% of the votes) and Juanjo was close to the podium being fourth (13% of the votes). In the second phase of the final, the vote counter was set to zero for the candidates who were competing for victory. As is tradition in the contest, Ruslana, Paul and Naiara returned to the songs they performed at Gala 0, so that the audience could appreciate their artistic evolution in these three months. It is one of the main mantras of Triumph operation since its beginnings. But the truth is that the first three classified are those who already arrived with a more defined talent among the initial 18 singers. Ruslana ended up being third and Paul second.
The 21-year-old singer winks at destiny by having been born in Armilla (Granada), Rosa López’s town, shortly after she won the Getmusic contest before an average of more than 12 million viewers. Paul made an impact from Gala 0 with his enormous personality and artistic magnetism, performing Way down we go. He has been one of the candidates who has taken the most risks in the 12 weeks of the contest. In the finals, he competed with a version of Baby Hello, by Rauw Alejandro and Bizarrap. The Andalusian has opted for a genre that does not allow him to shine vocally, but that he has known how to elevate in each of his live performances. As was the case with Virginia Maestro, his success has also been that of the strange kid in the class, the introverted soul full of things to tell.
New era
Tinet Rubira, director of the production company that created the format, Gestmusic, had been warning for years: if TVE was not interested in a new edition of the contest, those responsible would explore the unprecedented possibility of launching it on a digital platform. This finally happened in November, with Prime Video making the jump to regular live broadcasts. Chenoa, a finalist in the first edition, became the fourth presenter in her history. Solid in front of the camera and natural and close to the young applicants, she has convinced in her new role and has been one of the winners of the edition.
To close the circle, Chenoa opened the final gala singing with the six finalists Last dance, one of his most memorable performances during his time as a contestant. And it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that one of the night’s guest stars was Lola Ídigo, the first to be expelled from the previous era of Triumph operationin 2017, but one of the most successful singers to come out of the Gestmusic program in recent years.
The digital platform does not provide audience data, but, in global terms, the online figures appear to have been favorable. The sum of the views of its live broadcasts on its official YouTube channel, the reproductions on this platform and on others such as TikTok have surpassed those of the recent editions of TVE. In addition, through Prime Video, a window with a presence around the world, the program has also reached dozens of Latin American countries, expanding the exposure of its contestants to new markets. The version of SloMo of Chanel that Ruslana did at gala 5 has been the most followed performance on YouTube this season.
Unlike the successful return of 2017, in which the profile of its contestants—Amaia, Aitana and Ana Guerra, among others—and their followers helped reinforce the positive values of generation Z, this edition has been marked in terms of its virtual impact due to high levels of toxicity. The nature of TikTok, created to broadcast videos of very short duration, has taken many moments experienced by the contestants within the Academy out of context and has confronted their fans on social networks. But not everything has been negative in that regard. The screenwriter and actress Abril Zamora has become another of the great revelations of this new era, as an acting teacher for the children of OT. His relationship with the students, which has become one of his greatest emotional support points during these weeks, has skyrocketed his popularity on the internet.
“We know that, if this works, we are opening a door for the audiovisual industry that will not close again,” Rubira told this newspaper a few days before starting his new broadcasts. If the program renews for another season or if other on-demand platforms commit to broadcasting live spaces, it will be a clear sign that Triumph operation has changed the rules of television again, as it did in 2001.